Welcome to #DigPINS!
This summer #DigPINS is a five week online professional development course/conversation for faculty and staff designed to introduce and expand how connected digital environments impact pedagogy, identity, networks and scholarship. DigPINS will run from June 18th – July 20th with four weeks of content and a week long break in the middle.
This year will be the first iteration of #DigPINS in partnership! The cohorts at Kenyon and St. Norbert will have our own digital spaces, but we’ll also be in conversation on the open web!
So what’s Week Zero?
Week Zero is a setup week – an opportunity for us to give a little information about the experience and for you to do a couple things to prepare. Nothing is required this week, but it might save you a little time next week.
Our facilitators recently recorded a week 0 video which you can view to get an introduction.
Digital Tools
#DigPINS is not a “click here” kind of training course. You will need a few technical skills to participate, since it’s an online experience, but our goals are more about learning the “grammar” which will transfer from tool to tool, and the critical lens which lets you think about what works for whom, and why.
We also hope #DigPINS is an excuse for you to try things out; if you see an opportunity to push yourself by learning and evaluating a potential new tool, take it! The facilitators are here to help and ideally the community will work together to help one another to empathize and learn together in these areas. (Documenting your thoughts about a new tool, or an old tool used a new way, makes for great blog posts!)
To get ready for the course one of the things that you can do is just make sure that you have access to the following and if you have questions about access to reach out to Joe Murphy:
Moodle
Most of our work is going to be in the open, but we’ll also have a Moodle page available. Primarily we’ll just use the course forum to serve as a mailing list; it’s a place where you could contribute links or ask questions, or let us know when you’re trying something out on the blog or on Twitter. This will be private to just the Kenyon College participants, though Autumm Caines, the co-facilitator at St. Norbert, will have access as well.
Once the page is ready, you’ll see it when you log in to Moodle.
Blogs
As part of developing a digital identity you will blog publicly on this site. You are encouraged to post weekly in your blog, promote your blog post on Moodle or Twitter or elsewhere, and read and comment on your colleagues’ posts (including our St. Norbert colleagues over at snc.digpins.org). There are no due dates for blog posts, but do try to post once a week.
Joe will create accounts for each participant and you will receive an email invite.
Before we begin you may want to set up a Twitter account if you do not have one already, however, you may also want to wait till after the week on digital identity if you are unsure. You can sign up at https://twitter.com/ and there are instructions on signing up at https://help.twitter.com/en/create-twitter-account .
Video Calls
We will be using YouTube Live/Google Hangout for our synchronous video calls. Each week we will meet in this way and the call may be recorded for review later in some cases. You will need a good internet connection, a camera and microphone, to be able to participate; this could be a webcam on your computer or a smartphone/tablet. If you feel like you need a test call to check your connection, camera, mic, etc just contact Joe.
Hypothesis
Hypothesis is a social annotation tool for the web and digital documents. You will need an account and a browser plugin is optional. This tool allows us (in week 3) to collectively mark up a text that we are all reading in-line with comments, questions, and even video and images.
SCHEDULE
This is a very broad plan and as each week starts, we’ll release materials, readings and more solid schedule of activities will be released.
WEEK 1 STARTS JUNE 18TH – DIGITAL IDENTITY
We all contain multitudes; you have different identities depending on context. When and where do you identify as a scholar, teacher, professional, member of a community, or member of your family? During this week we will explore digital identity through some readings, your blog post, a synchronous introduction call, and an exercise called “Visitor and Resident (V&R) Mapping.”
WEEK 2: STARTS JUNE 25TH – DIGITAL NETWORKS
No man (or woman) is an island; we all participate in networks everyday through work, friends, and/or family. How do we create and maintain strong connections when the environment is digital? This week we will start exploring how we make those networks real and public; there will likely be a video call, twitter chat, or other sync activity. Blog posts and comments too.
BREAK – WEEK OF JULY 1ST
Enjoy your holiday; catch up if you got behind.
WEEK 3: STARTS JULY 9TH – DIGITAL PEDAGOGY
This week we begin to think about how online identities and networks can come into play as we are working with students. What are the benefits and drawbacks to working with students in the open? What digital tools could help students to think about subjects from new perspectives. Again, we will have a set of readings, blog posts, and a sync video call perhaps with a special guest.
Week 4: STARTS JULY 16TH – DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP
How are scholarship practices changing with the digital? Who reads our scholarly work? How much of our scholarly work is understandable to those outside of our disciplines? We will be pulling from what we learned in networks to reflect on our scholarly practices through readings, blog posts, and a sync activity/call.
So here we are, getting ready to go! We’re looking forward to reflecting on these issues with you!
The picture “First Day: calendar” by Eric Rice is used under its Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND) from https://flic.kr/p/4BoKM.
